Cuba turns down chance to rejoin OAS

In its first official pronouncement on the matter, the Cuban government formally rejected offers to rejoin the Organization of American States, which last week rescinded the country's 47-year suspension from the hemispheric organization.

Cuba's answer: No thanks.

In a statement published in the Cuban government newspaper Granma, Cuba called the OAS a graveless cadaver, and thanked ally nations for their efforts to correct a "historic and illegal error."

"Ever since the triumph of the revolution, the Organization of American States has taken an active part in support of Washington's policy of hostility toward Cuba. It made official the economic blockade, arranged for the embargo of arms and strategic products and stipulated the obligation that its member countries should break diplomatic relations with our revolutionary state," the statement read.

". . . It is an organization with a role and trajectory that Cuba repudiates."

Cuba was suspended from the OAS in 1962 because of its alliance with the Soviet Union and China.

But as more leftists were elected to run Latin American nations, the voices clamoring for Cuba to be readmitted grew louder. Those pressures swelled last week at the group's general assembly meeting in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where the sanction was officially lifted.